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Childless
Dr. Harvey Sumner has a dirty little secret. Although he’s a world renowned child psychologist with honors galore and the scion of a long line of child healers, he’s childless and hasn’t worked professionally with a single child for over thirty years.
The tension between his fame and the reality of his life finally reaches a breaking point when he’s kidnapped by the U.S. government and held in a bunker twelve floors below the National Institutes of Health. Here he learns of a covert government project to declare childhood as a medical disorder and eliminate it from the human genome in America.
Will Harvey manage to escape from his underground prison and save the country’s children and childhood itself? Or will America become a childless nation?
The tension between his fame and the reality of his life finally reaches a breaking point when he’s kidnapped by the U.S. government and held in a bunker twelve floors below the National Institutes of Health. Here he learns of a covert government project to declare childhood as a medical disorder and eliminate it from the human genome in America.
Will Harvey manage to escape from his underground prison and save the country’s children and childhood itself? Or will America become a childless nation?
- GenresFiction
251 pages, Hardcover
First published September 14, 2022
1 person is currently reading
2469 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Armstrong
54 books108 followersI am the author of 20 books, including my latest The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Neurodivergent Brain (Completely Updated and Revised Second Edition), which is a complete rewrite of a book I wrote with a similar title but slightly different subtitle in 2010.
My other books include: The Myth of the ADHD Child, 7 Kinds of Smart, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, and The Power of the Adolescent Brain. I've also written for Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and the AMA Journal of Ethics.
I see myself as a reader as much as, or even more than, a writer. Some of the books which I've enjoyed recently include Joseph and His Sons by Thomas Mann, The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, the complete Arabian Nights (3 volumes), translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell, and From Here to Eternity by James Jones.
Beyond literature and writing, my hobbies and pursuits include improvising on the piano, doing mindfulness meditation, watching great movies on The Criterion Channel, doing yoga, and cooking Mediterranean cuisine.
Married for twenty-five years, and now divorced, I live in a cute Victorian style home on a hill in Sonoma County, California with my dog Daisy.
My other books include: The Myth of the ADHD Child, 7 Kinds of Smart, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, and The Power of the Adolescent Brain. I've also written for Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and the AMA Journal of Ethics.
I see myself as a reader as much as, or even more than, a writer. Some of the books which I've enjoyed recently include Joseph and His Sons by Thomas Mann, The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, the complete Arabian Nights (3 volumes), translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell, and From Here to Eternity by James Jones.
Beyond literature and writing, my hobbies and pursuits include improvising on the piano, doing mindfulness meditation, watching great movies on The Criterion Channel, doing yoga, and cooking Mediterranean cuisine.
Married for twenty-five years, and now divorced, I live in a cute Victorian style home on a hill in Sonoma County, California with my dog Daisy.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2023
Given how much of the western world has grown increasingly concerned about aging populations, the premise of Childless felt very relevant. The government depicted in the novel hatches a radical plan to kill two birds with one stone. One, get rid of the pesky immatureness of pre-adulthood. Two, push a steady stream of ready workers into a waning force.
Because of that correlation with real problems and the label on Discovery as a dystopian, it took me entirely too long to realize that this novel was meant to be satire. The difference in how much I enjoyed reading Childless between before and after that realization is huge. Through that lense, more of the story makes sense, and the extreme emotional swings or reactions have more of a place. Characters didn't seem quite as 'spoof-like' anymore when you realize that was how they were supposed to be.
Even with that change in perspective, the novel can be a struggle to read at points largely because of its dialogue. What the characters say to each other isn't the real issue though, just the formatting. Much of the time, standard quotation marks aren't used (the opening mark looks like a circle almost). Alone, such a thing wouldn't be as distracting, but it kept swinging back and forth throughout the novel. Paragraph breaks for dialogue and the tags that help a reader understand which character is speaking and what they are doing while talking doesn't follow norms either. I often had to go back and reread.
The author employs a motley cast of characters in Childless, reminding me a few times of a circus. I enjoyed most of them, especially after looking at the work in the right light. However, I struggled with all but one of the female characters and how these characters became portrayed. If a female were present in the scene, the reader could expect one of or a combination of three things: crying, yelling, or throwing themselves at the protagonist. Whether intentional or not, this disappointed me.
I do think there would still be quite a bit of enjoyment to be had if a reader were to go in with the right expectations. Just think more A Modest Proposal than Children of Men.
Because of that correlation with real problems and the label on Discovery as a dystopian, it took me entirely too long to realize that this novel was meant to be satire. The difference in how much I enjoyed reading Childless between before and after that realization is huge. Through that lense, more of the story makes sense, and the extreme emotional swings or reactions have more of a place. Characters didn't seem quite as 'spoof-like' anymore when you realize that was how they were supposed to be.
Even with that change in perspective, the novel can be a struggle to read at points largely because of its dialogue. What the characters say to each other isn't the real issue though, just the formatting. Much of the time, standard quotation marks aren't used (the opening mark looks like a circle almost). Alone, such a thing wouldn't be as distracting, but it kept swinging back and forth throughout the novel. Paragraph breaks for dialogue and the tags that help a reader understand which character is speaking and what they are doing while talking doesn't follow norms either. I often had to go back and reread.
The author employs a motley cast of characters in Childless, reminding me a few times of a circus. I enjoyed most of them, especially after looking at the work in the right light. However, I struggled with all but one of the female characters and how these characters became portrayed. If a female were present in the scene, the reader could expect one of or a combination of three things: crying, yelling, or throwing themselves at the protagonist. Whether intentional or not, this disappointed me.
I do think there would still be quite a bit of enjoyment to be had if a reader were to go in with the right expectations. Just think more A Modest Proposal than Children of Men.
August 28, 2023
This is the first book I read by this author. It was funny, inspiring and insightful. I hope to read more soon!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews